Ch 02

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
Chapter two of Advance Agent by Christopher Anvil. This LibriVox
recording is in the public domain. Advance Agent by Christopher Anvil,
Chapter two. The next day, Dan left in a space
tug that Galactic was sending on a practice trip through

(00:21):
subspace to Porsus. From the tug, he went by matiform
to the lab ship in the Porson Sea. Here he
learned that he had only twenty minutes during which conditions
would be right to make the next matiform jump to
a troller close to the mainland. Dan had wanted to
talk to the men on the lab ship and learn

(00:41):
all they could tell him about the planet. This being impossible,
he determined to question the troller crew to the limit
of their patients. When Dan reached the troller, it was
dancing like a blown leaf in a high wind. He
became miserably seasick. That evening there was a violent electrical

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storm which lasted into the early morning. Dan spent the
whole night nauseously gripping the edge of his bunk, his
legs braced against the violent heave and lurch of the trawler.
Before dawn of the next day, aching in every muscle,
his inside sore and tender, his mind fuzzy from lack

(01:24):
of sleep, Dan was set ashore on a dark, quiet
and foggy strip of beach. He stood for a moment
in the soft sand, feeling it seemed to dip underfoot. This,
he thought, was undoubtedly the worst start he had ever
made on any planet anywhere. From around him, in the

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impenetrable fog, came distant croakings, whistlings, and hisses. The sounds
were an unpleasant suggestion that something else had gone wrong.
Between bouts of sickness. Dan had tried to arranged with
the crew to land him near the outskirts of a
porsoned city, but the sounds were those of the open country.

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What Dan wanted was to go through the outskirts of
the city before many people were moving around. He could
learn a great deal from their homes, their means of transportation,
and the actions of a few early risers. He could
learn from the things he expected to see, or from
the lack of them, if he was there to see them.

(02:32):
Dan moved slowly inland, crossed a ditch, and came to
what seemed to be in McAdam Road. He checked his
directions and started to walk. He forced the pace, so
his breath came hard and hoped it would pump some
life into his dull brain and muscles. As his senses
gradually began to waken, Dan became aware of an odd swish, swish, swish,

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like a broom dust, lightly over the pavement behind him.
The sound drew steadily closer. Dan halted abruptly. The sound
stopped too. He walked on swish. He whirled silence. Dan

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listened carefully. The sound could be that of whatever on porses,
corresponded to a playful puppy or to a rattlesnake. He
stepped sharply forward. Swish, swish. It was behind him. He whirled.

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There was a feeling of innumerable hairy spiders running over
him from head to foot. The vague shape of a
net formed and vanished in the gloom before him. He
lashed out and hit the dark and the fog. Swisch.
It was moving away. He stood still while the sound

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faded to a whisper and was gone. Then he started
to walk. He was sure that what had just happened
meant something, but what it meant was a different question,
At least, he thought ruefully. He was wider awake now
He walked on as the sky grew lighter. Then the

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fog shifted to show a solid mass of low, blocky
buildings across the road ahead. The road itself disappeared into
a tunnel under one of the buildings. To one side,
a waist high metal rail closed off the end of
one of the city's streets. Dan walked off the road
toward the rail. His eye was caught by the building ahead.

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Each was exactly the same height, about two to three
earth stories high. They were laid out along a geometrically
straight border, with no transition between city and farmland. There
was a faint hum, then a long, low streak, its
front end rounded like a horseshoe crab, shot out of

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the tunnel under the building beside him and vanished along
the road where he had just been walking. Now, Dan
saw a small modest sign beside the road care high
speed vehicles only swept. Dan crossed the rail at the
end of the street with great caution. The portion and

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clothing he was wearing consisted of low leather boots, long
green hose, leather shorts, a bright purple blouse, and a
sky blue cape. Dan bunched the cape in his hand
and thrust it ahead of him as he crossed the rail.
For some races were finicky about their exits and entrances.

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The straight, sharp boundary between city and farmland and the
identical buildings suggested to Dan that here was a race
controlled by strict rules and forms, and he was making
an obviously unauthorized entrance. It was with relief that he
stood on the opposite side within the city. He glanced

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back at the sign and wondered what swept meant. Then
he gave his attention to the buildings ahead of him.
Low at first, the buildings rose regularly to a greater
height as far as the fog would let him see.
Dan remembered the storm of the night before and wondered
if the progressive heightening of the buildings was designed to

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break the force of the wind. The buildings themselves were massive,
with few and narrow windows and wide, heavy doors opening
on the street. Dan walked farther into the city and
found that the street took right angle bends at regular intervals,
probably also to break the wind. There was no one

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in sight and no vehicles. Dan decided he was probably
in a warehouse district. He paused to look at a
partly erected new building built on the pattern of the rest.
Then he heard from up the street a grunting, straining
sound interspersed with whistling puffs. There was a stamping noise,

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a thud, and the clash of metal. Dan ran as
quietly as he could up the street, stopped, glanced around
one of the right angle bends. He was sure the
sound had come from there. The street was empty. Dan
walked closer and studied a large brass plate set in

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the base of a building. It looked about twenty inches
high by thirty wide, with a rough finish. In the
center of the plate was a single word sweeper. And
looked at this for a moment, then, frowning, he strode on.
In his mind's eye, he was seeing the sign by

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the road care high speed vehicles only swept. Dan couldn't
decide whether the words swept was part of the warning
or just an afterthought. In any case, he had plainly
heard a struggle here, and now there was nothing to
be seen. Alert for more brass plates, he wound his

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way through the streets until he came out on a
broad avenue. On the opposite side were a number of
tall many windowed buildings like apartment houses on the sidewalks,
and small lawns in front. Crowds of children were playing.
They were wearing low boots, leather shorts or skirts, brightly
colored blouses and hose, and yellow capes. Walking quietly among

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them was a tawny animal with the look and lordly
manner of a lion. It was a lion. As far
as the rapidly dispersing fog let him see, the avenue
ran straight in one direction. In the other it ended
a block or so away. Apparently, the crooked, wind breaking

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streets were only on the edge of the city. Dan
thought of the questions keel Guard wanted him to answer. One,
how do the Porsons keep the size of their population down? Two?
What is the connection between rejuvenation and vacation planet? Three?

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Do the Porsons have a proper mercantile attitude? Are they
likely to make an agreement? Will they keep one they do? Make?
To find the answers, Dan intended to work his way
carefully through the city. If nothing went wrong, he should
be able to see enough to eliminate most of the possibilities.

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Already he had seen enough to make Porsons look unpromised.
The rigid city boundary, the strict uniformity of the buildings,
and the uniform pattern of the clothing suggested a case
hardened ingrown way of living. Across the street, a low
door to one side of the apartment building's main entrance

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came open. The lion walked out. It was carrying a
squirming little boy by his bunched up cape. The big
creature flopped down, pinned the struggling boy with a huge paw,
and methodically started to clean him. The rasp of the
animal's tongue could be heard clearly across the street. The

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boy yelled. A healthy looking girl of about twelve, wearing
a cape diagonally striped and yellow and red, ran over
and rescued the boy. The lion rolled over on its
back to have its belly scratched. Dan scowled and walked
toward the near end of the street. Unless advanced planets,

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where the danger of detection was not so great, agents
often went in with complex surgically inserted organo transmitters in
their body cavities. Unlike the simple communicator Dan had, these
were fitted with special taps on the optic and auditory
nerves and the transmitter continuously broadcast all that the agents

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saw and heard. Experts at home went over the data
and made their own conclusions. The method was useful, but
it had led to some dangerous mistakes. Sight and sound
got across, but often the atmosphere of the place didn't.
Dan thought it might be the same here. The feeling

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that the city gave him didn't match what his reasoning
told him. He crossed a street, passed an inscription on
a building, Freedom Devisement Fraternity. Then he was back in
a twisting maze of streets. He walked till the wind

(12:09):
from the sea blew in his face. The street dipped
to a massive wall and the sea, where a few
brightly colored, slow moving trawlers were going out. Dan turned
in another street and wound back and forth until he
came out along the ocean front. On one side of
the street was the ocean, a broad strip of sand

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and the sea wall. On the other side was a
row of small shops, brightly awninged with displays just being
set in place. Out in front in the harbor, a
ship was being unloaded. Flat bottomed boats were running back
and forth from several long wharves on the street ahead
a number of heavy wagons drawn by six legged animals

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with heads like eels, bumped and rattled toward the wharves.
Behind them ran a crowd of boys in yellow capes,
a big tawny lioness trotting among them. On the sidewalk.
Nearby strode a few powerfully built old men, their capes
of various colors. Dan glanced at the displays in front

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of the shops. Some were cases of fish on ice,
others were piles of odd vegetables and racks. Dan paused
to look at a stack of things like purple carrots.
A man immediately came forward from the rear of the store,
wiping his hands on his apron. Dan moved on. The

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next shop had the universal low boots, shorts, skirts, blouses,
and hose in a sort of sizes and colors, but
no capes. Dan slowed to glance at the display and
saw the proprietor coming briskly from the dark interior, rubbing
his hands. Dan speeded up and got away before the
proprietor came out. The portions he thought seem to at

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least have a proper mercantile attitude. End of chapter two
read by Paul Hampton,